Thousands of brown pelicans find a safe place to nest on South Carolina’s Deveaux Bank, one of the largest pelican rookeries on the Atlantic coast. The isolated, shape-shifting island is free of raccoons and other predators that eat eggs and chicks.

See more pictures from the November 2014 feature story “Lowcountry Legacy.”

Vincent J. Musi recounts the humorous tale of a story eight years in the making on our Photography blog, Proof.